Crysis 3 To Have DirectX 11 Features On Xbox 360, PS3 For Better Performance?

Can Crytek rival current PCs before next gen? It’s possible Crytek will somehow integrate DirectX 11 features into the upcoming PS3 and XBOX 360 versions of Crysis 3

It looks like Crysis 3 may be more than another Crysis game for Crytek: they’re pushing for DX11

When I saw Battlefield 3, I though the Xbox 360 was pushed to its maximum. When I saw The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition, I thought the same. For a third time, it looks like I could be wrong.

I say that because Crytek has claimed “it’s possible to get DirectX 11 on the Xbox 360 and PS3″, and they could be working on it, and it could run in Crysis 3. At least some of it, anyway

The developer will be building upon the Crysis 2 DirectX 11 Ultra Upgrade, which was almost 3GB in size and hugely improved Crysis 2 for PCs. The developers want to get some that technology running in Crysis 3, as the developer doesn’t want a different experience between platforms.

Hilariously, the developers said some of technology being used on the current gen console shouldn’t be possible. Such technology includes render features that just shouldn’t work though experimentation. However, it sounds like there’s a long way to get yet: there’s a lot of effort being put in by the team to get the technology to work.

Impossibly possibly

Another, more specific, example given was parallax occlusion mapping. It is an advanced form of bump mapping that creates self-shadowing despite no polygons. Rasmus Højengaard, director of creative development at Crytek, said to Eurogamer that it’s an advanced feature that shouldn’t run on the Xbox 360. By extension he made no guarantees such features would be in, but they’re working at least.

Though Crytek won’t include DirectX 11 for the sake of it – performance is a priority. As Højengaard described it, they don’t want to choke the console. Crytek hopes Crysis 3, which launches next year, will be the showcase game for the Xbox 360 and PS3 and will represent what’s possible with the console at the end of the lifecycles (assuming next-gen consoles launch in 2013, of course).

Part of the reason DX11 support for Crysis 3 is possible is because the team is producing a quicker turnaround, and is using CryEngine 3. Crysis 1 was a new game, and Crysis 2 used a new engine.

Written by:Jon Charles Jonathan is a writer on the technology and video game industries. He is comfortable with using Mac OS X and Windows; he began using Windows with Windows XP during his early double-digit years, and started using OS X in 2009 on a MacBook Pro. He began gaming on the SNES back in the 90s.